Just wanted to appreciate Flapper and you for sharing wonderful moments and cheering me up so much no matter how gloomy my day was like the warmest sunshine that will exist no matter what.

Kelly

Your boy meant lot to me too. His voice was a highlight on an often gloomy day. He was funny, irreverent, inquisitive, silly, grumpy, goofy, intelligent and so much more. I shared his page with everyone I knew. In a confusing and busy world, the antics of a duck were just so appropriate to bring it all back to this…..life is precious, short, meant to be relished and not taken for granted. All of that wisdom from a handsome guy like Flapper. Thank you for sharing him with us, he has wiggled his little feathers into a small place in my heart that belongs to all rescued animals.

Waiting patiently for a book of Flapper’isms.

Much love to his people and peeps in the yard,
Mariana
Bellingham, WA.

Having heart failure myself, I’m curious. I have trouble with a lot of the new medication causing severe dizzy spells and can’t take it. What was the name of what he was on. I’m wondering why he didn’t want to take it, other than he knew it was his time.

My boyfriend played at The Gorge Memorial Day weekend and I got to go. I thought of you and George when I was there. Been years since I’d been out of town.

Thanks for sharing his last moments with us and his gift to you at the end. He’s part of you always. And you know that!

Your death sharing is a gift, not an imposition. I have been there many times with a beloved bird, wild or domesticated, and your words ring true. When you spoke of the sensation of an energy transfer at the moment of life surrender, and of the featherbody suddenly becoming oddly light (as though what occupied it literally had mass)–that was as familiar as morning coffee.

With all due respect, he wasn’t just your little boy. He was your feathermate. There is a kind of bond that interacting warmly on a daily and respectful basis with birds creates. We speak of “friendship” but it’s more than that. It is an intimacy I have never put into public words: crazy people might read them, and use them to justify further projection of their meanness or emptiness onto these feathermonks.

Just a little word of experience for the future. IME birds will hang on and hang on and hang on for those they love. They are devoted, brave, duty-and-connection-based beings. I learned in my teens, nursing hurt and dying city birds, that if one is dying, they will leave faster if you let them know it is OK to do so. I mean, actually say it. “It’s OK. I’ll be OK. I love you, and you can go if it is time.” I’ve also had this experience raising and releasing wild bird fledglings (they really don’t understand that you won’t be flying off with them).

I guess it’s best–as with any situation of death–to wait till one actually is OK with saying this, even though that may mean laying our burden (our own need to adjust) onto a dying, suffering beloved. IME, if the departer and the tender are both in tune, it’s possible to ask for these things at the end. Some birds will actually let you know that they’d rather be alone.

The abyss that such a huge loss leaves in you will become over time something like those caves at Altamira or Lascaux: a place where you can go into the dark and quiet, with a little flowing water, to ponder and write about and draw pictures of the deep and vast things. I have such a cave with all these little side rooms–each one washed out of the rock by my relationship with a particular bird.

As you adjust to the new way life is without Mr. Flapper Duck, look around at the rest of your flock. There may be ones awaiting the chance to be your feathermates as well, to be seen as very special individually. They will be there for you, albeit in the ways they have to offer. This is a mystery of life and love: its individuality coupled with its universality. I know that we are very lucky, all of us who have had someone come to us individually to acquaint us with that larger sea called love.

I woke up this morning to find my little goose dead. I’m very heartbroken and I can only imagine your pain since you had your guy longer than I. However this does not stop my new found love for geese and ducks. I will be wiser with any other geese and ducks when I’m ready to except the responsibilities again. I had my fair share of people trying to make a “rainbow” out of my goose’s death, but it was a living creature and had feelings and looked for me for comfort. In a way I feel like I failed that little goose. Actually, I DEEPLY feel like I failed it just because of the love I had for it. I just wished I knew more and had more to take care of it.

Again I’m sorry for your loss